The Picture Book Proclamation: Lessons for Life from a Favorite Form

I can’t stop thinking about the recent Picture Book Proclamation, penned by Mac Barnett, and signed by many of my favorite writers/artists/illustrators. This is an inspired statement toward the defense and reclamation of a book and art form that will always influence my life. But much of the advice herein can be applied to the artful inhabiting of our lives in general. The Proclamation abhors “imitation, laziness, timidity,” and extols the “fresh, honest, piquant, and beautiful.” Don’t we all “need a more robust criticism to keep us original?” I love the hope that “Even books meant to put kids to sleep should give them strange dreams.” And can’t we all condemn, in all things, “Glossy paper as default?”

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The Tangled Nest celebrates the "new home economics"--an essential twining of home, garden, food, craft, and co-existence with the wild, natural world.
My new book The Urban Bestiary was released in autumn, 2013.
“The challenge of our time is the movement from rural villages to big cities where nature seems gone. Haupt’s brilliant book restores nature in our lives and uplifts that relationship with stories full of wonder, awe and love.” – David Suzuki, host of The Nature of Things